|
Introduction...
Kerala State Government employs over 5,25,000 persons across the various
departments, schools and colleges in the State. The employees belong to various
categories responsible for administrative and functional areas. They form the
major asset base of the government. Efficient and effective utilisation of this
asset viz. the available human resources are important to ensure effective
administration of the state.
Structured
information base on staff, their training and experience is not readily
available. There is the feeling that a large section of the government is
engaged in administering itself. Issues related to employees like recruitments,
professions, trainings, postings, transfers, seniority lists, promotions and
retirements are handled within government. Moreover regarding individual
employees, drawl of salary, enforcing statuary deductions, processing of
request for loans and advances and ensuring its recovery, issues related to
leave, and increments are also routinely done. Over and above this, processing
of disciplinary matters and assessments of liabilities for calculating pension
and gratuity payments are also routinely done within the government.
Employees
by and large have a feeling that most of the above matters related to them are
processed in a tardy manner and with considerable delay. This leads to employee
dissatisfaction and in turn affects the moral of the employee. If a person
experiences substantial delay in getting his personal entailment sanctioned
with in the office environment, it is only logical that his own approach to
addressing common man’s requests would also be equally casual leading to
delays. Ensuring that government offices have an efficient system for
processing issues related to establishment matters and matters related to
employees is an important pre requisite for employee satisfaction and overall
improvement in morale and service delivery.
An equally
important requirement within government is in identifying the right person for
the right job. Though this identification process is constrained by
departmental structures, it will still be possible to a limited extent to
identify the right person for certain job requirements at least. However for
this to happen the details of qualifications, experiences and skill sets of
individual employee needs to be available in structured manner. Many employees
have qualifications much above the prescribed minimum levels. Employees with
also have very specific field level experiences which are relevant for specific
assignments. However at present there are practically no systems by which the
consolidated profiles of individual employees are readily available as a
decision making inputee.
In fact at
present the particulars of an employee including his qualifications,
experiences and personal particulars are noted in individual service books in
manual fashion. Though some consolidated registers like establishment register
is to be maintained in every office, over a period of time this has fallen into
disuse. As such there is a pressing need to have a consolidated personal
information database of all employees with in government capturing all the
relevant particulars of individual employees. An electronic database would be
ideally suited as the information could be retrieved and updated fairly
frequently. To begin with the fields in the service books itself could be used
and subsequently more information points on individual employees could be added
so as to make database as comprehensive as possible.
Based on
the above analysis, in G.O (MS) No.345/03/GAD dated 26/11/2003, Government have
accorded sanction for implementing an Integrated Personnel and Payroll
Management System for all Government Departments. As per G.O (MS) No.192/04/GAD
dated 29/07/2004, NIC‘s proposal for implementing the project with the name
Service and Payroll Administrative Repository for Kerala (SPARK) has been
accepted. The pilot project was successfully implemented in Government
Secretariat. After reviewing the pilot phase, based on the decision of the
Steering cum Empowered Committee for MGP, in G.O G.O (MS) No.392/05/GAD dated
05/11/2005, sanction has been accorded for implementing the package in all the
departments. The ownership and co-ownership of the project were entrusted with
IT and Finance Departments respectively to be implemented through Kerala State
IT Mission. The implementation is in good progress and more departments/
offices are being covered under the project.
As per the
tentative plans, SPARK will be fully implemented in all Departments and offices
(that is, covering around 30,000 Government Offices and 5.25 lakh employees)
with in the next five years.
|